Amid escalation of war of words between Bharti Airtel and newcomer Reliance Jio over call connectivity, telecom regulator TRAI today emphasised that points of interconnect is a “consumer” issue which it will continue to monitor. “We have been deliberating on this issue…It is not an issue of (operator) A versus B. It is an issue of consumers,” TRAI Chairman R S Sharma said on the sidelines of IAMAI Digital Summit here.

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Noting that TRAI had intervened into the issue, Sharma said the regulator will continue to look at the situation.

The comments of the regulator came a day after Airtel and Reliance Jio traded charges over provision of points of interconnection.

Airtel yesterday said that it had provided adequate interconnect capacity to Jio to serve over 190 million customers and and that the newcomer has been unable to activate all the points of interconnect (PoIs) and utilise the said capacity.

“This latest statement is a continuation of Airtel’s ongoing mischievous and motivated campaign to divert attention from its anti-competitive and anti-consumer actions and violations of license conditions which are being investigated by the authorities,” Jio said on Tuesday.

Over 53 per cent of the national long distance (NLD) calls are failing due to “inadequate” PoIs from Airtel, Jio has alleged.

“Inspite of intervention by authorities and censure proceedings against Airtel, NLD call failure rate was at 53.4 per cent as against TRAI norm of 0.5 per cent. There has always been a lag in PoIs required and PoIs provided by Airtel resulting in severe service issues for Indian customers,” Jio had said.

Bharti Airtel has said, “The PoIs have been provided well above the customer growth projection provided by Jio to Airtel. The capacity provided is ideal for serving over 190 million customers on the Jio network and is more than double of the 72.5 million total customers currently claimed by Jio.”

Jio has been unable to activate all the points of interconnect (PoIs) and utilise the capacity provided, Airtel had alleged.